Tag Archives: Bridgetown

The mayor and entire town council in Bridgetown have resigned en masse in the face of a police investigation into financial irregularities at town hall.

You have perhaps read articles on Bridgetown’s financial woes, built over many years of budget neglect, we don’t doubt. But is there any hint of the depth of their financial trouble in their (no doubt expensive) sustainability study done little more than a year ago? Wolfville had one too. Such studies seem to be signs of desperation, as if talk was action of import.

We were intrigued to hear (via CBC radio this morning) that there was a Bridgetown blogger, The Reader; he had little to say to enlighten CBC listeners on the sources of the Town’s troubles.

The Bridgetown Council seems mystified.

“Essentially, we’re stepping aside to make way for people with greater expertise.” [more]

That’s what you get for leaving things in the hands of a (highly paid) CAO, now nowhere on the scene. Were no Councillors aware, before this, of the situation? Awareness came upon them en masse?

So now it is up to the Province to do a forensic audit, closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Municipal Relations Minister John MacDonell said staff told him a couple of months ago about Bridgetown’s financial issues, and a department staffer was dispatched last week to work there two days a week.

But with the resignations, two people from the department will now go there for a few days, “and then we’ll just see where things go,” MacDonell said.

Neither he nor Cameron could recall a municipal government in Nova Scotia ever resigning en masse.